My grandpa gave me his decades-long collection and I genuinely have no idea how to even begin dealing with this
I’m 26 and my grandfather recently gave me his collection and basically told me, “Do whatever you want with it.”
Just to clarify upfront: he is still alive and doing fine. He doesn’t need money from this and doesn’t want me to give him anything if I sell something. He collected because he enjoyed collecting, and now he wants me to have it.
The problem is that I had NO IDEA how much stuff this man actually collected.
The pictures I’m posting aren’t even close to everything. What I’ve brought home so far is probably less than a quarter of it. He still has totes, boxes and large storage trunks full of collectibles in his basement and attic.
And apparently his definition of “collecting” was basically anything that could possibly be collected.
There are sports cards, non-sports cards, comic books, TY Beanie Babies, collectible beer steins, knives, Coca-Cola die-cast cars/trucks, NASCAR collectibles, toy cars, trains, airplanes, watches, coins, dolls, Space Jam/McDonald’s collectibles and all kinds of other stuff.
Every time I open another tote I find an entirely different hobby.
The cards alone are insane.
He started collecting cards around 1986 and has baseball, football, basketball, hockey, NASCAR/racing, wrestling, boxing, soccer, music, Marvel, DC, Star Trek and probably other categories I haven’t even found yet.
There are boxes and boxes of loose/unsleeved cards that I’m not even attempting to tackle right now. I know a lot of the late 80s/90s stuff is junk wax.
Instead, I started going through the cards he personally sleeved, top-loaded or put into hard cases years ago, figuring those were probably players/cards he thought were worth protecting.
Even doing that has become overwhelming.
I’ve found Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Ken Griffey Jr., Roberto Clemente, Reggie Jackson, Barry Bonds, Tony Gwynn, Kirby Puckett, Ivan Rodriguez, Will Clark, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, George Brett, Greg Maddux, Mike Piazza, Mario Lemieux, Brett Favre, Troy Aikman, Dan Marino, Emmitt Smith, Steve Young, Barry Sanders, John Elway, Dale Earnhardt, Richard Petty and many others.
And that’s mostly from going through portions of the baseball, football, basketball and hockey.
I haven’t even seriously started on the racing, wrestling, boxing, soccer, music or non-sports cards.
There are also unopened packs mixed in with everything.
The grading/value situation is where I’m really stuck.
I’ll research a card and see something like $1–$5 raw, but then graded copies sell for $30, $50, $80 or more depending on grade. Then I’ll find other cards that might be $50–$100+ raw but hundreds of dollars graded.
I understand that seeing a PSA 9 or PSA 10 sale DOES NOT mean my card would receive that grade. I also understand that asking prices aren’t sold prices.
But I know basically nothing about grading.
Some of these cards have been sitting untouched in hard plastic for 20–30+ years and look nearly perfect to me, but I don’t know enough to properly judge centering, corners, edges, surface, print defects, etc. I’m also hesitant to start pulling the better-looking cards out of the old holders just to inspect them.
I’ve read that grading cheap cards can be a terrible financial decision because by the time you pay grading fees, shipping, insurance and selling fees, you can easily lose money.
But that’s exactly what has me confused.
If something is worth $3 raw but $80 in a PSA 9, do I sell it for $3? Do I gamble on grading it? Do I just keep it?
And when you’re dealing with potentially thousands and thousands of cards, obviously I can’t send everything to PSA.
I’m not desperate for money and don’t need to liquidate this collection. Part of me thinks I should properly protect the better stuff and keep it for another 20–30 years. Maybe someday it goes to my kids or grandkids.
But there’s also SO MUCH of it that keeping literally everything forever seems insane.
I’m also worried about walking into a card shop with boxes of stuff while knowing basically nothing and relying entirely on someone else to tell me what I have.
So I’m hoping people who actually collect can tell me how they would approach this.
If your grandfather dropped a collection like this in your lap, what would you do first?
How would you sort it?
How would you decide what deserves to be researched individually?
At what raw value/graded value would you even consider PSA?
Would you have someone experienced pre-screen possible grading candidates?
Would you sell the cheap stuff in lots?
Would you keep the stars/rookies/vintage stuff long-term?
And are there particular cards, sets, collectibles, brands, years, errors, variations, etc. that I should be watching for while I’m digging through this?
I’m not asking Reddit to individually price thousands of items for me. I’m trying to figure out a system so I don’t spend the next five years Googling every $0.50 card — while also not accidentally selling something important for a couple bucks because I didn’t know what I was looking at.
At this point I don’t even care about maximizing every single dollar. I just don’t want to do something stupid that I’ll regret later.
Because right now every time I think I’m making progress, I open another tote and apparently Grandpa has unlocked another DLC.